Hen party stuff made awesome

Month: February 2016

Hot on the heels of the Wonder Woman sash I had an order from the lovely Toria who wanted a Marvel themed sash for her hen party. I wanted to do something a little different to the one I had just done so I changed up the design a little bit. I also wanted to add in a back design.

For this design I chose a plain red fabric for the sash and used the Marvel print fabric for the lettering. This is a great option if you want to keep the cost of your sash down as the fabrics with licensed prints on them like comic book themed ones cost 4 times as much as plain fabric.

Marvel heroes sash

The bride to be wanted to personalise the sash so I suggested having one of the call-outs at the top of her sash use her initials ‘VIP’. I also added a back design using some larger call-outs and some stars. Adding a back design will cost more but in this case was weighed out by using the more expensive fabric for the lettering rather than for the whole sash.

I do try and match what customers want to their budget as much a possible 🙂

This is definitely a stand out sash, which turned out to be a good thing as the bride wore it to the National Wedding Show in Birmingham.

I wasn’t sure if I should have a blog but I’ve got some great stories behind the work I do that I really wanted to share. I also hope it will give brides to be and their friends an extra bit of inspiration on how to make your hen party extra awesome.

OK so I make alternative hen party stuff, I never set out to do this it just sort of happened. I’ve been involved with alternative hen parties now for over five years in one way or another but it never really occurred to make stuff.

But one day last year I found something I had made for a shoot that had been put in a draw never to be used again and it seemed like a bit of a waste and I thought someone somewhere may like it enough to give it a new home. This was that thing….

A black and white striped hen party sash with tattoo style letters and a few flowers. I popped something on my other Facebook page to see if anyone wanted it and my inbox exploded.

Not only did people want this one they wanted to know if I could make others. Now never being one to shy away from a challenge I replied with ‘yeah sure, what would you like’? I would worry about the tiny detail that I had only ever made one before later.

So the first order came in for a Wonder Woman hen party sash and I hit the internet looking for fabrics and materials. This was probably the biggest learning curve, trying to work out what it was I actually wanted and where to get it.

I decided to go for a classic comic book look for the sash with comic book style letting and ‘boom’ and ‘pow’ call-outs. Now confession time, I’ve never picked up a comic book in my life but I’m a huge fan of superhero TV (I’m an Arrow, Flash, Smallville, Supergirl junkie) and movies and I’m familiar with the style so I at least had a bit of a starting point.

I began by sourcing the fabric and I found this amazing print, which has proved to be really popular.

I then began to work on the lettering, I wanted something dynamic and yellow fitted in perfectly with the Wonder Woman logo. The red thread was a bit of an accident as I didn’t have any yellow so I thought I’d try something else so I didn’t have to wait to go to the shop. As you can see it worked amazingly. My impatience wins again.

I popped a few pictures on my personal Facebook page to show the progress I had made and to get a few opinions. I was still a bit unsure that it was going to be any good so any reassurance was good at this stage. The pictures aren’t great but I honestly thought this was going to be a one off. So I wasn’t thinking marketing.

I took about a week to make and the finished product looked like this.

It went to lovely Bride to Be in Scotland, Natalie, and was ordered by her friend Evelyn. She also asked that the bride’s initials and wedding date were incorporated so I sewed them into the inside of the sash. I don’t offer this service as standard as my embroidery skills aren’t up to much but it can be done if you are nice to me.

So I’m on a mission to make hen party stuff that doesn’t suck, isn’t tacky and definitely has no willies! So to celebrate this I’m giving away a Wonder Woman sash to one lucky reader. All you have to do it comment below and last date for entries is the 29th February an the winner will be announced on the 2nd March.

There are a few rules

Entrants but be from the UK mainland

The sash would be available between June-August

The sash design will be a version of the Wonder Woman sash as pictured above